January 6, 2006

I say to the guy who's here right now taking a picture of me blogging for the local newspaper. He set up some lights, he said, to make the photograph interesting with the lighting because, "just a gal sitting at a computer isn't very interesting."

"I'm blogging about the fact that you're taking my picture."

"Oh, my goodness."

...

He requests "a little happiness."

"Just keep doing your thing. I'm not even here."

...

Well, he took about a thousand pictures, but I will only get to see the one that's chosen for publication.

It's tough to make pictures of people at a computer interesting. Occasionally we do this sort of thing at work for publicity or marketing literature. They always fall back on one person sitting in front of the CRT with another person looking over their shoulder pointing at some fancy techie looking graphic on the screen.

Completely bogus but the photographer is happy. If the photographer is happy he'll go away and you can get back to work. I don't know why they even bother.

Quxxo, I was being lighthearted, but if you fellows want to make Dick Cheney the President for the next three years, knock yourselves out. Or, you know, you could impeach both of them and presumably Denny Hastert will become President - not my first choice, but a midwesterner is a midwesterner. :p

Oh, and I adore This Modern World! Not only is it very funny, well-written, extremely sharp and clever, his continuing support for Ralph Nader perfectly exemplifies the Democratic party's ability to stab itself in the back while swooning in its own arms.

Sadly, there is no GOP equivalent of TMW. Republicans can't do funny, and Democrats can't do talk radio, it's a fundamental rule of physics. Sad, but true.

Simon, perish the thought of Cheney or Hastert at the top. Thanks for the reminder. But one note: This Modern World's creator is not a Democrat. He routinely lambasts Democrats as spineless. There's little love among Democrats and Nader supporters.

Ann, it used to be that while subject could pick what pic or pix went with a newspaper article, photo editors would sometimes let subjects see and/or buy unused shots post publication of the particular story in question. Are you sure that's not the case with you local paper? If you're interested, that is.

If it didn't matter what computer someone was at, I used to try to find one that either had something interesting stuck to it or was on a desk or against a wall, or whatever, with some visual interest. That does help make this sort of inherently dull shot more interesting.

Oh, and re www.impeachbush.org:Out of a population of around 299,598,000, which translates to approximately, oh, let's be generous and say 200,000,000 eligible voters, 615,265 -- barely a quarter of one percent -- have signed the petition. This is truly momentous stuff, can't you just feel the Constitutional crisis? As if that weren't small fry enough, 59,028,439 Americans voted for Kerry last year, which means that 58,413,174 of them - 98.95% - have yet to support this impeachment movement.

When thinking and typing, one can look interesting in art (think Mona Lisa with a Mac), but one hopes most fervently to avoid appearing like one is merely slack-jawed and drooling, and just watching cartoons.

If it was a photog from the Cap Times or State Journal, the published photo will eventually be here: http://www.merlin-net.com/default.asp?CategoryName=MADISON. In a few days, run a search for yourself and you should be able to both use it on the web (unfortunately with the watermark) or purchase the photo if you like it. Just a thought ... really like your blog, by the way.

If you are still buzzing from the incredible honor of having your local newspaper take your picture -- oh my, I can almost feel the excitement out here! -- perhaps this story will bring you back to earth:

It would be a good thing if every state in the nation got an independent redistricting commission. We have one here in Arizona. At first they didn't think it worked as advertised-- they said we got five safe Republican districts, two safe Democratic district and one that had competitive party registration. The competitive one is now a strong advantage for the Republicans due to the financial strength of the incumbent (even though he actually lives in Virginia and only bought a house in Flagstaff to run-- but he is fairly well entrenched anyway).

However, it turns out that 'safe' may only mean 'safe with the incumbent.' Everyone has been counting the eighth district (east Tucson and SE Arizona) as safe Republican, but with rep. Jim Kolbe unexpectedly announcing his retirement, it is suddenly very competitive.

The problem with getting to a redistricting commission is that the dominant party in each state doesn't want it. So they spend a great deal of money and effort to defeat it. That is why redistricting commissions were defeated in Ohio (Republicans running the state) and California (Democrats running the state). I will say it was entertaining to listen to some national right wing radio jocks--yes, I do listen to them-- telling people in Ohio to vote against their commission, but then telling people in California to vote for theirs (the measures were virtually identical, so they had to really split hairs, and it was painfully obvious).

But the problems we see with Gerrymandered districts are national, so the solution is to uniformly push for an independent redistricting commission in every state that has more than one congressperson.

Did the picture make the paper? I found a story on line here. But it's photoless. Oh, the date stamp is Saturday night -- no wonder I didn't see it in the paper this morning. Guess I'll check in the AM.